Foundation of the "Deutsche NILES Werke AG" in Berlin-Oberschöneweide as a licensee of the Niles Tool Works Company Hamilton / Ohio, USA. Production of heavy turning, milling, planing and drilling machines under licence.
In a construction period of two years, a production facility was built on a plot of 72,000 m², which had a covered area of 32,000 m².
As early as 1901, production of heavy lathes, milling, planing and drilling machines for components up to 15 m in diameter began. Through the ten-year license agreement, the German NILES-factories acquired all the patents, drawings and models, as well as the exclusive right to supply the European continent. Particularly noteworthy was the production of lathes with horizontal face plates, i.e. the workpieces were clamped horizontally for turning and rotated horizontally during processing - like a carousel, which later gave these machines the name "carousel lathes". The product range showed a strong specialization with regard to railroad construction.
In 1904, the production of pneumatic tools began, which quickly made NILES well-known. One year later, the production of compressed air equipment followed.
Great importance was attached to the quality standards to be maintained. Development, organization and production were constantly updated to the state of the art. All tools were of "modern manufacture," which was considered too expensive at the time. For example, G. Schlesinger, the pope of machine tools at that time, emphasized in the VDI magazine, among other things, the introduction of gauge blocks and control normatives. These were used to accurately check each part after each operation as an instrument of precision.
After the licence agreement with the eponymous NILES Tool Works Company expired, the Berlin-based company continued to build turning and milling machines and supplemented the product range with special machines developed in-house.
The regulations issued at the start of the war in 1914, e.g. stopping the export of mechanical engineering products, hit NILES hard. The enforced focus on war production interrupted the further development of the core products.
When the USA entered the First World War, the designation of a German company with the name of an American factory no longer seemed acceptable. The strong domestic political pressure on the company forced it to change its name in 1915 to »Maschinenfabrik Oberschöneweide AG«, abbreviated and trademarked as »MOAG«.
In 1920, the company was renamed "Deutsche Niles Werke AG". With the reused brand "NILES", the business relations from the time before World War 1 were to be reactivated. In the same year, the factory and part of the equipment in Oberschöneweide were sold. In October, the relocation to Berlin-Weißensee took place, where the property and buildings of the ball bearing factory August Riebe GmbH were taken over.
The multitude of carousel lathe designs in heavy versions, mostly manufactured in single-item production, offered hardly any sales opportunities. The product range was restructured accordingly. In 1921, NILES successfully launched the EK 3 single-column vertical lathe for turning diameters up to 1,180 mm.
